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Getting imagineNATIVE

Boy, a top-grossing N.Z. comedy about a Maori lad who wishes his ex-con father were more like his idol Michael Jackson, opens imagineNATIVE Oct. 20.

Boy, the opening movie at the ImagineNATIVE film festival, stars James Rolleston. (HANDOUT)

By Jason AndersonSpecial to the Star

Thu., Oct. 14, 2010

In 2002, Whale Rider and Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner demonstrated the newfound strength and diversity of aboriginal cinema to movie audiences worldwide. Eight years on, indigenous filmmakers are no less bold when it comes to rejecting stereotypes, tackling fresh challenges and telling compelling stories.

Since its own founding in 1999, imagineNATIVE has been well poised to take advantage of this global boom for aboriginal cinema. The 11th edition of the film and media arts festival runs from Oct. 20 to 24 at venues all over town, with the Bloor Cinema and the JCC’s Al Green Theatre devoting their screens to the festival’s program of features, shorts and documentaries.

Boy, a comedy about a Maori lad who wishes his ex-con father were more like his idol Michael Jackson, will provide a lively start for the fest. The recent Sundance fave makes its Toronto premiere Oct. 20 at the Bloor.

Set in 1984 in a small town on the east coast of New Zealand, Boy is the second feature by Taika Waititi, a sometime writer-director for Flight of the Conchords. Devotees of the Kiwi comedy series will recognize the same brand of humour at work in this story about an 11-year-old whose heroic fantasies about his long-absent father do not match up with reality when the genuine article arrives home from prison.

The fact that his pa Alamein (Waititi in a colorfully deranged performance) is more of a buffoon than a bully means that the movie can sustain its buoyant tone. But in between the terrific comedic setpieces (including daffy homages to MJ’s most iconic music videos), Boy does display a more serious side. Given the movie’s finely balanced blend of lunacy and poignancy, it’s easy to see why Boy has become the highest-grossing New Zealander movie ever on its home turf.

That Nuummioq has achieved the same distinction in its own territory is not so surprising given that it is that the first dramatic feature to have been produced entirely in Greenland.

Screening Oct. 21 at the Al Green Theatre, the film would be plenty remarkable just for its seldom-seen views of Greenland’s majestic landscapes. Nuummioq’s portrayal of the region’s unique mix of Danish and Inuit cultures is equally fascinating.

Indeed, it’s something of a bonus that the film itself is so satisfying and moving as a drama. Set largely in the town of Nuuk, it’s the story of a shaggy, hard-living carpenter (well played by Lars Rosing) who must man up when a medical crisis changes his perspective on a new romance and an old family tragedy.

Nuummioq’s makers have cited Atanarjuat and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen as key inspirations. That’s a testament to how much director Zacharias Kunuk and the rest of the team at Isuma Productions in Nunavut have redefined the possibilities for filmmaking in (very) northern climes.

Kunuk and his collaborators have also shown the world how the Inuit people have defended their traditions in the face of many threats, though the gravest of these may be emerging only now.

Kunuk and co-director Ian Mauro examine the ways in which global warming is radically transforming Canada’s north in Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, a new hour-long documentary presented at imagineNATIVE in a special interactive event. At 7 p.m, on Oct. 23, the film will be simultaneously screened at the Al Green Theatre and streamed on Isuma’s site at www.isuma.tv/isuma-productions. Afterwards, Kunuk and Mauro join viewers via Skype for a virtual Q&A.

Another of Canada’s most renowned aboriginal filmmakers presents a new work at imagineNATIVE. Included as part of the shorts program on Oct. 23 at the Al Green Theatre, When All the Leaves Are Gone is very different from the provocative and sometimes controversial documentaries for which Alanis Obomsawin is better known. Instead, it’s a delicately rendered vignette about a lonely First Nations girl who copes with racism in 1940s Quebec by escaping into a vivid fantasy world.

As usual, Canada’s aboriginal filmmakers are well represented at imagineNATIVE. The diverse bounty of new works ranges in style from a dance film — Living With Fire/From the Ashes, a collaborative short by director Shelley Niro and choreographer Santee Smith — to a bona-fide teen horror movie — Jeremy Torrie’s A Flesh Offering, which makes its world premiere on Oct. 22.

The fest’s closing-night film unites many prominent members of the country’s aboriginal arts community, including actor Gary Farmer, singer/actor Jani Lauzon and — in her first screen role — author Lee Maracle. A Windigo Tale (which screens at the Bloor on Oct. 24) also serves as the directorial debut for Armand Garnet Ruffo, whose accomplishments as a poet and a professor prove he’s just as much of a multi-tasker as his cast members.

Filmed largely on the Six Nations Reserve in northern Ontario, A Windigo Tale uses both supernatural tropes and the less fantastic form of a family drama to examine the awful legacy of the residential school system.

Though Ruffo and his actors apply themselves to the subject with all the gravity it requires, Farmer’s performance as a loquacious local provides the film with some lighter moments, too. Like so many of the filmmakers represented at this year’s imagineNATIVE, he’s a guy who knows the value of a good story.

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